Embrace Vulnerability, Attract Real Love

The wrong people make you feel ashamed of your emotional vulnerability. You reach out—softening your hands to touch their shoulders—only for them to stiffen and shove you away. But the right one would lean into your touch, take a deep breath at the relief your hands bring, and feel gratitude for you.

The problem is, we tend to internalize how the wrong ones treat us. We convince ourselves it’s our fault, that something in us repels them. Our touch must be acidic, unwanted—so we must be unwanted, unlovable. And we waste so much time trying to prove otherwise, to them and to ourselves. We scrape at our hands, dip them in boiling water, desperate to soften them further—to be more palatable. Because staying too long around the wrong people has a way of warping our sense of self. Staying too long around the wrong people has a way of diminishing us. 

Society frames emotional availability as something to be rationed or as a weakness and this often leads to self-blame when relationships don’t work out. And society loves encouraging emotional unavailability. It punishes people for their vulnerability, mocks them for “allowing” their heart to get broken, tries to clothe them in shame for offering too much of themselves to another person, for not playing the games—waiting to reply so you don’t seem “desperate,” keeping options open by stacking up a dating roster, acting busy just to keep someone wanting. Why can’t we just be?

And I’ve participated in these games before. Sometimes I still do. But it’s exhausting. It’s a game of pretense, a loop that keeps whispering you’re not good enough until you change xyz. And it’s not sustainable. Why should I have to act unavailable just to avoid repelling the unavailable? I want to attract the available. Wouldn’t being myself naturally push the wrong ones away instead of calling them in, instead of signaling to them hey here I am for you to barely tolerate me? And more than that—wouldn’t it pull the right ones toward me instead?

That’s why I don’t buy into the whole dream girl or he’s just not that into you rhetoric. It suggests we’re flawed—like we weren’t “the one” and that’s why they pulled away, romanticizing an 'idea' tells us he would treat the girl who's better than you way better and oh what makes you two different? Um... I guess she's better because um he likes her I guess, she's his dream girl and you're not so clearly she's better in some way, maybe if you weren't so desperate and available you would be his dream girl, hey, here's how to act less desperate and less available so you can trick him into wanting you for a short amount of time until you slip up and he sees through your facade and runs away and then I'd just tell you the same thing again, that oh maybe you're just not his dream girl and here's how to be more of his dream gir—it's an endless loop. 

It makes us obsess over what’s wrong with us, pits us against some future girl who doesn’t exist yet or a past one they treated better. It fuels a quiet competition we never even signed up for. 

But what if you’re not flawed? What if they were just crappy people for treating you in a crappy way? What if they were simply the wrong ones, and instead of putting them on some pedestal, we remove them? No competing for their approval. No prioritizing them over ourselves. No tiptoeing around them, keeping parts of ourselves locked up out of fear of scaring them away. No shame in wanting a relationship built on emotional vulnerability. No shame in being available, in giving, in forgiving—even if they didn’t deserve it.

But we have to learn to leave these emotionally unavailable individuals quicker. We have to learn to leave.

Because every moment spent with the wrong one is time wasted—time we could spend alone, healing… or with the right one.

I used to feel ashamed of craving romantic connection. I get it—being open about wanting love makes you easier to manipulate. It makes you a target for the emotionally unavailable, for people who only know how to take. So you start hiding it. You act like you don’t care, like you’re above it, like you’re just here for a good time, too. Because the world tells you that needing nothing is how you win.

But I don’t want to win. I want to live. I don’t want to play pretend or prove I’m worthy by being detached. I don’t want to be the girl who “wants him less” and therefore gets chosen. I don't even want to be chosen anymore, I want to live. I want to be found the way a bee searches for a flower, follow my scent, hear my words, look beyond just admiring my petals, appreciate them. I want to be found because I’m open. Because I care. Because I’m capable of love, and I’m not ashamed of it.

So no. I won’t hide that part of me. I won’t shrink it down to fit into some game I never wanted to play in the first place. I grow, I learn, I work, I have hobbies, I have talents—and I still desire love. There’s no shame in that. There never was.